Stay in touch. When theatres closed down, Chris was two weeks into rehearsals for Jack Absolute Flies Again, a show he co-wrote with Richard Bean for the National Theatre’s Olivier stage. A feuding fairy King and Queen of the forest cross paths with four runaway lovers and a troupe of actors trying to rehearse a play. And then he and Oberon go into this dream world, in which Theseus learns that maybe you shouldn't be quite so prescriptive over who you demand to love who, and then everyone can chill out and have a great time be in love with whoever they want.”, Where to watch: Sadler's Wells Digital Stage. The Bridge Theatre will become a forest – a dream world of flying fairies, contagious fogs and moonlight revels, surrounded by a roving audience following the action on foot. I have to be optimistic. It’s a role he’s always wanted to play, and the reaction has been “really humbling and overwhelming”. “But putting it in this setting with Nick’s structural changes, the whole thing just kind of popped into life. ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ streams tonight on the National Theatre’s YouTube channel from 7pm BST. by Theatre Weekly Press. Reading Time: 2min read . “I don’t get it! This is a review of the performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by the National Theatre when it was streamed on YouTube from the 25th June to the 2nd July 2020. They say the art of good comedy is in the timing. What it becomes is this injection of joy in the world.”, This pure enjoyment rippled through to audiences; Chris compares its impact to One Man Two Guvnors, another show he worked on with Hytner back in 2011, which became the first National Theatre Live to be streamed during lockdown in May. “It unlocks the play and increases the innocence, and it takes away that slightly vindictive, masculine patriarchal agenda,” says Chris. Animashaun, who has also starred in Barber Shop Chronicles and Master Harold... and the Boys at the National Theatre and will appear in the big-screen adaptation of Caitlin Moran's novel How to Build a Girl, describes it as the best time he’s ever had in the rehearsal room and says the cast still talk almost every day. It was Brexit, wasn’t it? Calls to this number are charged at standard national rate and are included within your mobile network minutes. The Bridge Theatre’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is streaming with National Theatre at Home from 7pm UK time on Thursday 25 June, until 7pm UK time on Thursday 2 July 2020. This is crazy.”, There may have been something in the air last summer, A Midsummer Night’s Dream had three different productions at once. What it becomes is this injection of joy in the world.”. Directed by Nicholas Hytner, this production of A Midsummer Night's Dream built upon the success of his immersive staging of Julius Caesar (NT Live 2018). I’ve certainly nailed that.” But he’s disappointed for the cast who haven’t been able to perform the play. I ask Chris what he made of a debate earlier this year as to whether Shakespeare has been taken over by the ‘woke brigade’. For the Bridge Theatre he has directed Young Marx, Julius Caesar, Allelujah!, Alys, Always, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Two Ladies. [Source: Bridge Theatre Gallery] Oliver Chris, Gwendoline Christie and Kevin McMonagle. and Hammed Animashaun (The Barber Shop Chronicles) lead the cast as Titania, Oberon, Puck and Bottom. “It becomes like an allegory: Oberon is the dream version of Theseus. Two boys cavorting aro. They say the art of good comedy is in the timing. Through the years I have seen several different productions, but none … “I wait 40 years to write a play and I managed to time it with a global pandemic and the once-in-a-f***ng-civilisation closing down of the theatres. In his version, Bottom is not a vain luvvie who wants the best part in the Mechanicals’ play, but someone who just loves life. and in came a sense of liberation and living for the present. Everyone was tired, and I think people just needed a laugh,” says Animashaun. “To be in the middle of that, standing among 1000 people, delivering some of the most beautiful lines of Shakespeare is about as good as it gets.”. “We hoped people would come back two or three times, we never thought people will be coming back like ten or eleven times,” says Animashaun. Previously he was Director of the National Theatre from 2003 to 2015. So I can’t afford to be pessimistic about this. “That doesn’t really happen for plays,” he says. Switching the roles of Oberon and Titania (played with regal style by Gwendoline Christie) meant that the fairy king fell in love with Bottom – and had the best night of his life – while the queen ran the show. “That will be the thing that’s tragic, if these actors don’t get the opportunity to show off because they were so brilliant, and if I were the only person who saw it.”, A Midsummer Night's Dream will be streamed for free on the, Holiday and flight bookings surge after lockdown exit plans revealed, Whitty: Medics and care staff have responsibility to get Covid vaccine, London Covid cases plummet with just 13 new infections in one borough, Queen’s relative jailed for 10 months for sex assault, Meghan and Harry make first appearance since announcing pregnancy news, Patients with covid at ‘very high risk of death’ after surgery. A Midsummer Night's Dream streamed as part of National Theatre at Home from Thursday 25 June to Thursday 2 July 2020. “I think there’s something about A Midsummer Night’s Dream – and I don’t mean this in any disrespect, but like, I always thought Shakespeare probably wrote it when he’d had too much to drink, because if you read it it doesn’t make much sense.”. Discover movie trailers and view upcoming movies at www.cineworld.com. It’s certainly tangible on the phone when I speak to its stars, Hammed Animashaun and Oliver Chris, who stole the show with a little help from Beyoncé (more on that later). und on a bed, stroking each others ears... it was so funny! “There’s nothing crazy about a fairy who’s telling him that he loves him. Review: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM at The Bridge Theatre By Stuart King Thursday, June 13 2019, 12:09 - Reviews Nicholas Hytner , clearly buoyed by the success of his 2018 promenade Julius Caesar at the Bridge Theatre , has followed it this season with A Midsummer Night’s Dream - with both dazzling and … A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Bridge Theatre June 2019. ost theatre lovers will admit with a heavy heart that, brilliant as it is to have them, watching theatre productions online can never match up to really being there. Audiences also loved the moment when Bottom asks for “a calendar”, turning to the audience, taking someone’s smartphone and taking a selfie with the other mechanicals. “It’s not really about that. Set in the mystical woodlands surrounding Athens, with its cocktail of magic, love triangles, and donkey-human hybrids, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream has always been dear to my heart as the first play I formally studied in school. Like anyone you speak to in theatre, he’s quick to say there are bigger problems, and makes light of his own personal fortunes. “But putting it in this setting with Nick’s structural changes, the whole thing just kind of popped into life. “It was really funny because people were following the bed and Beyoncé’s playing and everyone’s going crazy. The original performance took place at the Globe Theatre, London, in summer 2013. “There’s nothing crazy about a fairy who’s telling him that he loves him. It’s available until Thu Jul 2. I used to focus on those people more than anyone,” Chris says, descending into mischievous giggles. Return to A Midsummer Night's Dream page, or watch the full playlist for A Midsumnmer Night's Dream on YouTube. And it remains at the centre of Nicholas Hytner’s immersive approach, … “I wait 40 years to write a play and I managed to time it with a global pandemic and the once-in-a-f***ng-civilisation closing down of the theatres. He’s a proud king and his mind is forced to be opened by Titania’s actions in making him fall in love with this creature who would normally disgust him. In his version, Bottom is not a vain luvvie who wants the best part in the Mechanicals’ play, but someone who just loves life. For information or assistance, call Cineworld on 0330 333 4444 Mon-Sun 09:00 - 22:00. He remembers people stopping him in the street or coming up to him in Sainsbury’s asking him about the show. Two boys cavorting around on a bed, stroking each others ears... it was so funny! National Theatre Poster Archive ... Return to A Midsummer Night's Dream page, or watch the full playlist for A Midsumnmer Night's Dream on YouTube. How to get your cultural fix online - in pictures, “who just lives in the moment and wants to do and try everything,” he says, won him mountains of praise, including the Critic’s Circle Award for Best Shakespearean Performance earlier this year. “So we tried to figure out a method to not go to the same place every time, because we realised during the show if I go to the same place every time, there’d be 12 people putting their phones up.” Still, though, people “clocked it from the beginning” – resulting in a Twitter thread where people tried to come up with a formula to end up in the right spot. 'The course of true love never did run smooth.' “I don’t even remember a bad day during the whole process,” he chuckles. This play was performed three times in the same summer and you’re telling me that there’s not room for those three productions to be different and experimental? Casting Announced for Immersive A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Bridge Theatre. “It’s been a difficult time, but I have to stay positive because it’s our livelihoods. As their dispute grows, the magical royal couple meddle with mortal lives leading to love triangles, mistaken identities and transformations... with hilarious, but dark consequences. It’s about the interpretation of what you think when you read a particular piece of work.” Once the pandemic is over, he says, “people want to see radical things, Animashaun and Chris have been regulars in the NT Live broadcasts (“It’s distilled nine years of my career into three months, it makes me look terribly successful,” says Chris), but both sound desperate to get back on stage. The pair were wheeled around the pit on a four-poster bed dancing to Beyoncé and which the crowd has no choice but to follow. The running time is 2 hours 40 minutes with a very short interval. “I feel like I’ve been living in 2020 for about 20 years, sometimes it’s hard to think back to what it was like in 2019. “We’ve got this play, which runs the risk of being done to death – you know, you hear Midsummer Night’s Dream and everyone’s eyes sort of roll back in their heads,” says Chris, whose previous roles include Prince William in King Charles III to wind-up merchant Boyce in Green Wing. Shakespeare's most famous romantic comedy was captured live from the Bridge Theatre in London. “That doesn’t really happen for plays,” he says. Shakespeare's magical fairy comedy lends itself very well to a site-specific setting, frolicking in forests, that kind of thing.. He’s like, ‘alright, I’m not surprised’.”, Much like Oberon and Bottom themselves, when the night they fall in love arrives, the audience just has to go with it, literally. I have to be.”, A Midsummer Night's Dream will be streamed for free on the National Theatre’s YouTube channel tonight (June 25) from 7pm and be available on demand for seven days. A Midsummer Night’s Dream @ The Bridge Theatre ‘Not for my fairy kingdom’ roared Oliver Chris’s Oberon during his big fight with Gwendoline Christie’s Titania, early in the Bridge Theatre’s Midsummer Night’s Dream.The subtle textual change was part of an extensive … His faith in theatregoers returning to venues is clear: “I think if people weren't scared they’re going to die, there’d be stampedes.”, He hopes the show’s postponement is a hiatus rather than a cancellation. Animashaun’s view is that people are entitled to their opinion but “I’m a strong believer in interpretation is everything.”, “Why would you want to see the same thing with the weird shorts and tights and fluffy collars and stuff like that?” he adds. I’ve certainly nailed that.” But he’s disappointed for the cast who haven’t been able to perform the play. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bridge Theatre, Potters Fields Park, SE1 2SG. Audiences also loved the moment when Bottom asks for “a calendar”, turning to the audience, taking someone’s smartphone and taking a selfie with the other mechanicals. SHAKE Festival present Rehearsed Reading Of A Midsummer Night’s Dream … “It’s not really about that. “I feel like I’ve been living in 2020 for about 20 years, sometimes it’s hard to think back to what it was like in 2019. Nicholas Hytner’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream … Watch our 2013 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream for free, available to stream on YouTube from Monday 15 June until Sunday 28 June 2020. You mightalso like. Away went the sinister undercurrent of coercion and manipulation – your heart always goes out to Helena in particular – and in came a sense of liberation and living for the present. Buy NT Live 2020 Re-Issue: A Midsummer Night's Dream movie tickets and get showtimes at Cineworld cinemas, on the Cineworld mobile app or online. To say he has little time for the argument is putting it lightly. (The others were at the Globe and Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre.) Tickets £15-£69.50 until 31 August 2019. Processing registration form. He remembers people stopping him in the street or coming up to him in Sainsbury’s asking him about the show. “It was really funny because people were following the bed and Beyoncé’s playing and everyone’s going crazy. Nicholas Hytner co-founded the London Theatre Company with Nick Starr. This is a smart and novel approach to this wonderful, comic fantasy. Staged last summer, Nick Hytner’s production turned the Bridge’s pit area into a magical forest, with acrobats swinging over the audience and beds rising out of the floor. August 28, 2019, by Peter Kirwan. “Why would you want to see the same thing with the weird shorts and tights and fluffy collars and stuff like that?” he adds. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with Gwendoline Christie as Titania. “I was just having the time of my life and I was waiting for Nick to see a show and say ‘Hammed, you need to tone it down because you’re doing a bit too much’ but he never did,” he says with a big laugh. Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube. In fact, they loved it so much that the cast came up with “an algorithm” so people wouldn’t deliberately stand in the same spot. PM says ‘vaccine passports’ will be needed for international travel, Road map revealed: Key dates for reopening of schools, pubs and travel. When theatres closed down, Chris was two weeks into rehearsals for Jack Absolute Flies Again, a show he co-wrote with Richard Bean for the National Theatre’s Olivier stage. The Bridge Theatre’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is streaming from 7pm UK time on Thursday 25 June, until 7pm UK time on Thursday 2 July 2020. “That will be the thing that’s tragic – if these actors don’t get the opportunity to show off because they were so brilliant, and if I were the only person who saw it.”, Animashaun, who was filming in Prague when the world started to go into lockdown, is adamant that theatre cannot be allowed to fall by the wayside. It was Brexit, wasn’t it? A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Bridge Theatre. The Bridge Theatre will become a forest – a dream world of flying fairies, contagious fogs and moonlight revels, surrounded by a roving audience following the action on foot. This is crazy.”, There may have been something in the air last summer – A Midsummer Night’s Dream had three different productions at once. It was originally performed live and … He always had an idea of how he would play the role and says Hytner just let him go for it. His faith in theatregoers returning to venues is clear: “I think if people weren't scared they’re going to die, there’d be stampedes.”, He hopes the show’s postponement is a hiatus rather than a cancellation. “It’s painful right now to see what theatres are going through, when you hear West End theatres closing for the rest of the year, friends of mine not being able to work,” he says. All rights reserved Cineworld Cinemas 2021 ©. Donations are welcomed to support both theatres while they remain closed, A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Bridge Theatre - in pictures, Staged last summer, Nick Hytner’s production turned the Bridge’s pit area into a magical forest, with acrobats swinging over the audience and beds rising out of the floor. But we were very close to the audience who were sitting as well, and there’d be the occasional very po-faced person sitting there, just refusing, arms folded, wondering what on earth we’d done to Shakespeare’s greatest comedy! February 21, 2019. “I think there’s something about A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and I don’t mean this in any disrespect, but like, I always thought Shakespeare probably wrote it when he’d had too much to drink, because if you read it it doesn’t make much sense.”, I ask Chris what he made of a debate earlier this year as to whether, Shakespeare has been taken over by the ‘woke brigade’. His book Balancing Acts is published … Hytner’s changes made one of Shakespeare’s more off-the-wall plots make more sense to a modern audience. Everyone was tired, and I think people just needed a laugh,” says Animashaun. REVIEW ROUND-UP: A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Bridge Theatre In London theatre , Native , Opinion , Plays , Reviews by Emma Clarendon 16th June 2019 Leave a Comment Love London Love Culture rounds up the reviews for the Bridge Theatre’s latest immersive Shakespeare production. Away went the sinister undercurrent of coercion and manipulation, your heart always goes out to Helena in particular. I used to focus on those people more than anyone,” Chris says, descending into mischievous giggles. But some of the exuberance of the Bridge Theatre’s immersive production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream , broadcast for free tonight, may just burst through the screen. Where to watch: Marquee TV, Facebook, YouTube, Where to watch: Emailed link after donation, Animashaun’s performance as Bottom – “who just lives in the moment and wants to do and try everything,” he says – won him mountains of praise, including the Critic’s Circle Award for Best Shakespearean Performance earlier this year. Pessimistic about this always goes out to Helena in particular a fairy who’s telling him he. S Dream at Bridge Theatre in London Night ’ s Dream at Bridge Theatre )! 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